Does anyone have a theory on what enabled Instagram to get to 27m users with only 13 employees in 2012, and why that still seems very difficult today despite all the SASS products helping startups?

Some game companies also used to release a new game monthly in the 90s, without code completion, Copilot, Git, Github!

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Ironically it was simplicity. The app may be a bloated "everything app" now but back then it was just photos, no comments. It was like a great mobile Flickr with filters. They then added just the right features. 

Once Facebook bought them, it was hard for anyone to ever do that again. Snap tried. TikTok went more...

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Oh I didn't realize it didn't have comments at that point.

Yea I guess a big part of this phenomenon is its easy to forget how much more complex the average app is now.

Yeah I tried it, and it's competitor Hipstamatic, at that time. I pretty sure you couldn't even caption your own photo.